Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Known for: domestic painting incorporating Nigerian visual culture

Njideka Akunyili Crosby moved from Nigeria to the United States as a teenager and developed a photorealist painting practice that addresses the cultural duality of her experience — scenes of domestic life constructed from collaged Nigerian magazine imagery overlaid with paint — in works of enormous technical complexity. Her The Beautyful Ones series draws its title from Ayi Kwei Armah's Ghanaian novel. A painting from 2012 sold for $3.1 million at Christie's in 2017, an auction record for a work by a living Nigerian artist.